do this more

We crowd around the table–the casual, marked up table with the glitter from Zoe’s elementary school project melted into the finish, the one so in need of a renewal our paper plates have begun to stick. I’ve talked about refinishing it, imagining the dust thrown off with vigorous sanding, the feel of that gritty paper in my hand. But each time I mention it, someone says they love that table for its honesty, for its deep memory of gatherings just like this one, and each time, I think redemption isn’t so much about forgetting as it is about new life.

But for now, our paper plates schwack when we lift them and we laugh, wandering into the kitchen in search of more goodness to taste on our tongues. These kitchen-table-friends can handle our sticky, worn, life-lived spaces. My friend leans forward on her elbows, recounting the story of her husband’s proposal. We’ve been friends a little while, but I’ve never heard her tell this story, never watched her husband’s eyes sparkle with mischief as my friend’s lips curl at the edges with the memory of her own disbelief.

“I said, ‘You’re doing this now? Here?'” She recounts, and we laugh, full, and it’s exactly that: a re-counting. We count God’s gifts like Halloween loot, spreading it out over the table. A table full of friends, we drag our fingers through smears of leftover sauce and lick the tips, satisfied on living grace. I can’t remember the last time I feasted so on friendship.

Playing cards sit in haphazard stacks all over the table, temporarily abandoned. Touching mine with my finger, I smile over discoveries only made like this, over remembering that rebuilds us all together into something more, over retelling that restores a bit of our continual crumbling. On our own, even with and maybe because of our constant digital connection, snapshots and statuses dismember us, flattening out the round warmth of our leaning, tangled arms, stealing the richness from the sound of our voices. It’s tragedy, I think, looking around as eyes brim and hands intertwine, how we sometimes cram our lives into squares, into rectangles held in the hand. In trying to reach more and more all at once, I wonder if we forget how to touch the friends we can fit around our tables?

The thought makes me reach for the friend closest to me now, sliding my arm around her shoulders, thinking how I’ve only just discovered that her quietness melts away in a competition, how I’ve only just glimpsed the fierceness of her spirit.

“We should do this more,” storying friend says, finishing, and her husband nods as the chorus of our mutual cheer begins to drop away. “Why don’t we do this more?”